What I take away from reading F.A.Hayek (particularly The Road to Serfdom and The Fatal Conceit) is that a community can keep itself going even when it's full o

What I take away from reading F.A.Hayek (particularly The Road to Serfdom and The Fatal Conceit) is that a community can keep itself going even when it's full of inefficiencies, so long as the members of the community all seem focused on the same goals. This is why a sense of national community is strongest during wartime, when everyone is focused on winning the war. But once that emergency is gone, so is the common purpose. When the members no longer see the same goals, there will be no way to keep them all working in concert. Perhaps in this Chelsea hotel, the group had sufficient focus because of their art. Other commenters have mentioned a possibility of a religious element helping, as with the Amish. I don't think this is the case. For one thing, I don't see the Amish as a very distinct community (as opposed to culture); its margins are very fuzzy. And as a counterexample to the claim, I'd point to the Israeli kibbutzes, which I think we can interpret as religious because of their Israeli foundation (especially at the time, when Israel was very young), and were certainly failures.